PERSEVERANCE by Jonathan Mayer

“Many Indian music collaboration projects in the past have looked towards bridging cultural gaps while not focusing on development within the genre. We are looking at specific Indian classical elements to see how we can create new material”. - Jonathan Mayer

Perseverance, a new work composed by The Jonathan Mayer Ensemble was commissioned as part of the zerOclassikal Project over a series of month long workshops collaborating with diverse musicians such as Mitel Purohit, Steve Tromans and Andrew Bratt.

The new work premiered on Sept 16th at the Cockpit Theatre as a three part development of a new raag, keeping to the theme of tilak karod, relooking at the pakards, and amalgamating various taals to create contrapuntal material.

Perseverance explores the vulnerability of hope –in a world embroiled in harsh severity, where beautifying is its only hope to survive it. Jonathan Mayer picks this important theme as way of claiming south Asian classical music is very much a contemporary musical genre which can be used to create new material about important issues and subjects. “Music should allow you think about the world around you, not just sound pretty.”

Jonathan hopes the work pioneers progression within Indian Classical Music and more musicians step forward to explore expression through this music genre with its rich tradition and heritage.

Jonathan Mayer’s Composition project follows his ground breaking and radical performance at the last zerOclassikal stage where he reversed structure of raag Gujari Todi – which will soon be available for download.

The zerOclassikal commissions engage British born and/or trained artists to expand and radicalise the boundaries of South Asian Classical music. Each artist developed their work through questioning the traditions, experimenting new ideas and platforming progression.